It can't just be me

Yesterday I had the unpleasant job of justifying apostrophes to someone who had just uttered the phrase 'We could just strip all the apostrophes out'. At first I was pretty nice as I assumed I had misunderstood what he was suggesting, but when I realised that he really did believe that we could just use the same text without any apostrophes I had to dig my fingers into my knee so hard, I thought I was going to pass out just from the effort of not punching him. I mean, I can understand people not knowing how to use an apostrophe (well, I can't understand it, but I have had to accept that it's true) but a complete disbelief in the absolute necessity of having them is another matter. In the end I composed an impassioned speech which started with a short discourse on the most important elements of apostrophe use, covering the indication of possession and including some wisdom about the contractions. I then went on to point out that even if I never contracted another word and managed to express every concept on the website without the use of the possessive, we would still have to be able to use apostrophes in John o' Groats or 3 o'clock and thus it was an entirely unacceptable pretence at a solution. Fortunately, whilst I fear the finer points of my verbal treatise may have been wasted on someone who came up with the idea in the first place, the sheer vehemence of my argument seemed to scare him into not pursuing the suggestion any further.